Must review all the things!

Book Review: Final Girls – Riley Sager

What’s a “Final Girl,” you may be wondering…well, in “film-geek speak,” the Final Girl is the last girl left standing at the end of a horror movie after a terrible massacre has occurred.

Lisa Milner had Stephen Leibman at a sorority house in Indiana.Samantha Boyd had Calvin Whitmer (the Sack Man) at the Nightlight Inn while working the night shift.Quincy Carpenter had Joe Hannen (Him) at Pine Cottage on a weekend trip with friends.Although these girls didn’t survive completely unscathed (either mentally or physically), they do all have one thing in common…when they survived, they became Final Girls.

Even before Pine Cottage, I never liked to watch scary movies because of the fake blood, the rubber knives, the characters who made decisions so stupid I guiltily thought they deserved to die. Only, what happened to us wasn’t a movie. It was real life. Our lives. The blood wasn’t fake. The knives were steel and nightmare-sharp. And those who died definitely didn’t deserve it. But somehow we screamed louder, ran faster, fought harder. We survived.

So where are these girls now…how does life continue on once you’ve went through something so horrific? Lisa Milner decided to write books, help trouble girls…until she suddenly kills herself (or is it murder?). Samantha Boyd goes “off the grid”…until she suddenly shows up at Quincy Carpenter’s door after Lisa’s death. Quincy Carpenter chooses not to define herself as a “Final Girl”…she wants to live a normal life and runs a cooking blog called “Quincy’s Sweets”…until she suddenly realizes that nothing about her life is normal.

What happened to Lisa Milner? What’s wrong with Samantha Boyd? Can she be trusted? How can Quincy pretend to live a “normal” life with the constant reminder of Pine Cottage? Will Quincy ever remember the details of that night…and does she really want to?

This book is mysterious, surprising, and captivating. I have loved characters and hated them (and visa versa) within only a couple of pages. The book kept me curious until the end, which was surprisingly unexpected. Great read!